Gather At The Well: Operationalizing Your Values - Lindsey Fuller
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Overview
This episode of Gather At The Well focuses on operationalizing your values - making sure your stated beliefs are actually reflected in your policies and practices. đź‘€
Lindsey shares examples of how to do this, like designing hiring processes and bereavement policies aligned with your values. She’ll also walk you through an exercise to help you identify your top personal and professional values, and figure out where they may be missing from your current systems. Because living your values, not just stating them, is crucial for building a healthy, sustainable workplace culture.
Episode Highlights
Tone-Setting + The Case for Operationalizing Your Values (2:00)
"Dots and Squeezes" somatic exercise (6:00)
The importance of aligning values when designing co-leadership models (12:00)
Examples of how values can be infused into organizational systems, policies, and practices (19:00)
Exercise to identify your 3-5 personal and professional values (23:00)
Reflection on where your values may be missing and how to bring them into alignment (27:00)
Critical Hope: Fight for your values. They’re worth it. (33:30)
Exercise + Journal Prompts
What are your top three to five values?
Now sit back and look at them. What do you think?
Circle the one or the ones you think show up at work.
Narrow down to just one for the sake of this exercise. How does this show up in my leadership, in my professionalism, in my communication, or my behaviors at work? How does it show up?
If a newscaster was interviewing you or conducting an observation for a story, what would they see and be able to describe?
Can you feel that value living in your actions, in your practices, in the systems that you lead?
Where do you want to see more of it? Where is that value missing?
What's a system where you feel dis-ease?
Affirmations
I can live my values at work.
My intuition is powerful.
Our organizational culture can heal.
Reflection Questions
Reflect on an individual or interpersonal or systemic hurdle that you're facing, a disharmony or disconnect between you and another colleague you're supposed to be collaborating with.
Instead of giving up or leaving or refusing to partner, identify what the underlying values are for you, for that person, or perhaps the values that were embedded in the system when it was designed (Especially if you inherited it and weren't the one that created it!)
Get curious, identify the value and figure out how you can bring your professional values, or the new values of the team or org more closely into alignment with this practice or policy.
Resources and Helpful Links
Check out our associated blog posts and tools: The Value of Values
Powerful Quotes
“Are we about what we say we are?” -Lindsey
“Your policies impact your people, and because many of us get the ick or distance ourselves from some of our responsibility, which is probably a sign, friend, that Your values and duties are in disharmony." -Lindsey
“Your policies impact your people.” -Lindsey
“I feel like I make tons of decisions every day in my job. Sometimes we just have to feel into our core beliefs.” -Lindsey
“If values aren't a part of the exploration, as you attempt to resolve misalignments, you're clashing without context.” -Lindsey
“Values matter when it comes to workplace wellbeing.” -Lindsey
“You have to trust your intuition and your intuition’s fuel comes from your core beliefs.” -Lindsey
“Don’t keep your values hidden in the shadows. -Lindsey
“Why are values on your website if they aren’t in your daily experience?” -Lindsey
“I’m advocating for human-centered systems and human healing practices.” -Lindsey
“What's the cost of working in an organization where your personal or your professional values are constantly being negated or confronted? It's that lack of motivation. It's feeling disconnected from the team or from the mission, and frankly, it can feel like you're overextending or compromising your beliefs. Like you're abandoning yourself, handing over your agency, or you're acting in ways that you're not proud of." -Lindsey
“Not every human-centered system will catch every human and center them in ways that you or they want. Nothing can be everything, not for everyone every time. That doesn't mean you're failing as a leader.” -Lindsey
“You create the conditions, you usher in the vision, you provide the guard rails and the cheerleading and the support. But life will life. That's one thing we can count on. This is a marathon and not a sprint.” -Lindsey
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